Highlights
The phone is still fresh, fun and very cool to use - my previous review already described how clean, modern and original the user interface is and everyone who's seen the phone in action has been impressed - including long-time iPhone fans. When the OS was launched in November and screen shots appeared everywhere I must admit I didn't really 'get' it - the system looks so different from any other platform and very minimalist. It was only when I had a play with a demo unit that suddenly it started to look very interesting. Animation and navigation are such an important part of the experience. Even Microsoft's marketing department seemed to struggle to figure it out and sold it on the ridiculous premise that the slickness of Windows Phone 7 would get your tasks done quicker so you'd use your phone less and get on with your life. Selling a product by describing it as something you wouldn't want or need to use very much seems a bit stupid. It's taken a fan called Brandon Foy to show them how it's done - watch this Youtube clip.
Early adopter smugness - when the original iPhone launched I thought it was a spectacular piece of technology but for various reasons I didn't buy one, and later lived to regret it. With WP7 the timing was perfect - my contract ended and the OS had been on the market less than three months. 2011 is looking full of promise with the Microsoft presentations at MWC in Barcelona featuring live demonstrations of upcoming features - no vapour-ware here. By the end of the year copy/paste and well-designed multitasking will be delivered making the platform fully competitive in all areas.
Shiny new applications - WP7 benefits from having fresh new versions of mobile applications like Facebook, IMDB, Amazon and Shazam. They usually have more sophisticated and modern interfaces than the iOS and Android equivalents which in many cases haven't seen any real development in a few years. It sounds bizarre to say that applications on a Microsoft platform do a better job of getting out the way and presenting the actual content than their Apple equivalents, but in a lot of cases it's true.
Zune desktop software - this is excellent to use and works very well. As with the phone itself the user interface is very stylish and clear, and the basic operations work well. Microsoft seem to have tried very hard to out-do the much-criticised iTunes and visually I think they've succeeded although feature-wise it's hard to find much in the way of differentiation, apart from Zune's wireless sync ability.
Social networking integration - the phone has actually got me using Facebook again, although I feel like I've been coerced! I am not a lover of Facebook, mainly due to privacy concerns and a mistrust of the company itself. But when Facebook is so well integrated into the phone it's a much more tempting proposition. You can post on someone's Facebook wall directly from their contact page, and status updates are easily done from the "Me" tile on the home page. I've recently added a tile for my wife to the home page and that works a treat as well, allowing me to quickly access all her contact details without having to go and find her in the people hub. Twitter integration is now confirmed for the major "Mango" update later this year which is a very exciting prospect.
Criticisms
Reliability - the core OS seems very stable but there have been a few glitches. The Marketplace application is my biggest annoyance because it's very prone to crashing and when it does fall over it manages it in a way that prevents it from working again until the phone is rebooted. This is not the kind of experience you expect especially when trying to buy stuff. Also, I have seen occasional nasty screen corruption on my device forcing a reboot. This looks like a firmware issue and I suspect it's specific to the HD7 because it's not been widely reported elsewhere.
Back button navigation - to ensure the user interface remains clear and uncluttered there is no onscreen back button in any apps - they rely on the hardware button. This is fine except when the button tries to fulfil the dual roles of moving back through phone application screens and also acting as a browser back button in the web browser. Imagine you're in an app with an embedded browser and you navigate a few links then hit the Start button to return to the home screen. Then hit the back button to return to the app. You can't then use the back button to go back in the history of the embedded browser window, because the back button will take you back to the Start page. This has caught me out a couple of times and there appears to be no easy solution, except to say that browser-type applications (including Internet Explorer) should really be given their own software navigation buttons, and the phone's hardware back button should be reserved for navigating between application screens. The problem is that a precedent has already been set and I doubt Microsoft will be willing to change it.
Super secret hidden menus - on a few occasions I've been frustrated by being unable to find an option only to find out it's hidden behind a press-and-hold menu. A classic example was when the pictures hub on the home screen was showing a picture I didn't like. I assumed it was random and would change eventually but it didn't. I looked everywhere to find an option to change it but couldn't figure it out. Eventually after searching on the web I realised you can press-and-hold the background of the picture hub (not the tile itself!) and a 'Change Background' option appears. I'm not convinced by these menus because in many situations you just don't know they're there. In some of the messaging applications common commands that should be on the application bar are also hidden in these menus.
Third party application performance - a few marketplace apps I've tried can be sluggish and have a choppy user interface. Twitter clients in particular seem to cause issues for developers, including in the official app. Interestingly the phone's default built-in apps like the People hub have no such issues which raises a question of whether Microsoft have developed them natively rather than in Silverlight and .NET like the Marketplace apps. Either that or only Microsoft has the knowledge and skills to make applications smooth and fluid at the moment.
Gaming performance - the hardware itself has more than enough power to run current mobile games well and 3D games can look very impressive, but 2D games I've tried have been less smooth than expected. It appears that Microsoft has limited games to running at 30 frames per second to preserve battery life. A well intentioned move and sensible for 3D titles but 2D games don't look as smooth as they do on recent iOS devices that can push closer to 60fps. This is something that Microsoft need to look into, preferably before Angry Birds is released.
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| The Harvest, one of the best looking Windows Phone games |
Marketplace app pricing - as an iPhone user I was used to being pleasantly surprised by the price of applications but this is rarely the case on WP7. Hopefully it's a reflection of the smaller market and range of applications rather than greed, eventually greater competition should bring prices down if the forces of capitalism do their job properly. There's far less really great free stuff for WP7 at the moment and non-free apps are often more expensive than I would expect. Developers should think about pricing cheaply and going for market share while it's early days - a great app at a great price could easily become the platform standard at this stage in the game.
Summary
The only frustration is having the patience to wait for the OS updates to roll in, and for developers to release some really compelling games. But it's important to remember how great the base platform is, and that even though WP7's market share is small at the moment, Microsoft is really working hard on this product and is in it for the long run.
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